Forensic Science

Join the BrightTALK forensic science community for access to online forensics training from respected professionals in the field. Study forensic science online to learn necessary skills for trace evidence in forensics, liquid and gas chromatography and sample preparation. You can also attend live webinars to interact with forensic scientists and have your questions answered.

How do ischemia and fixation impact the quality of your assay results and information transfer? Garbage in! Garbage out! Join Geoffrey Baird MD, PhD and David Chafin, PhD at 9 AM Mountain Time, March 31, 2015, who will discuss the impact of ischemia and fixation on assay results, information transfer and some novel approaches to address these important factors. Dr. Baird is an Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Washington. Dr. Chafin is a Principle Scientist, Technology and Applied Research at Ventana Medical Systems Inc.

This session provides a local Trust perspective on how the Industry Costing Template can be practically embedded for financial management of commercial research studies.

A brief overview of the national tool principles is provided, but the main focus of the session is on practical examples of how these principles have been locally developed and implemented to support investigator and directorate incentivisation to encourage involvement in commercial contract studies.

Who should view this session?

"Financial Management of Commercial Contract Studies: A Trust perspective" is a must see for all NHS staff supporting commercial research including R&D and Finance teams, as well as Local Clinical Research Network staff supporting Trusts in their area to conduct commercial contract research.

As part of the Network's HSJ award category sponsorship, Danetre Medical Practice were highly commended for the entry to Clinical Research Impact.

Jo Gilford, Practice managing partner, and Laura Hopwood, research nurse, discuss their story and how the practice turned research into core business.

The presentation covers:

* Their vision for research in the practice
* Actions and best practice in creating a research culture
* Outcomes - how the research portfolio has increased by 500% to date since undertaking these actions

Biological terror agents are frequently spore-forming bacteria and hardy in the environment, intended to persist despite best efforts at disinfection. This webinar explores the field of UV-C disinfection and the power of pulsed-xenon UV disinfection systems to neutralize such threats. Full spectrum pulsed-xenon UV is lab-tested to deactivate bioterrorism agents in the environment, expanding the options for protecting first responders and armed forces from dangerous pathogens.

COPD is a widespread, costly and largely preventable condition which affects over 300 million people worldwide and is recognised as the ‘third-leading’ cause of death in most countries. Adherence rates among patients with the condition are seen to be low, despite evidence that shows appropriate use of medication and sensible lifestyle changes can reduce mortality by 60% and hospital admissions by as much as 42%.

Given the proven increase in quality of life when adherence occurs, and yet the persistence of non-adherence globally, there is clearly a disconnect. So why is poor self-management so prevalent and what can we do about it?

In conjunction with self-management and behavioural change specialists Atlantis Healthcare, we present a multi-stakeholder webinar and debate, which will combine real world patient needs with expertise from healthcare, pharma and patient advocates to look at the challenges to successful self-management/adherence and ascertain what the industry can do to better support patients in achieving optimum outcomes.

The webinar is comprised of 15 minutes of presentation and 40 minutes of live debate - which you can participate in, sending questions to the panel.

A live tweetchat (#rwCOPD) will follow the webinar, enabling full interaction across all stakeholders to further delve into this topic and explore some of the issues and solutions raised during the webcast.

This is the second webinar within the Patient Insights Summarized series.

This session gives an overview of the support available from the NIHR Clinical Research Network life-sciences industry team at a local and National level and explains how the network works in partnership with you to ensure your study is set up rapidly and recruits to time and target.

The webinar will also look at up to date performance data, how we collect it and how this information is transformed to ensure studies and sites are actively managed to deliver.

Who should view this session?

"Getting the best from the Network" is a must see for any CRA, Start up manager, study manager or NHS R&D manager who is involved in setting up and managing commercial contract clinical research in the NHS.

- Are you looking to deliver your research within Europe?
- Need multiple, reliable sites?
- Do you want to know why you should come to the UK?

In the past the UK’s reputation for delivering clinical research was questionable. But that’s all changed. Over the last six years the research landscape here has changed dramatically allowing us to make great strides in delivering research for the life-sciences industry. So whether you’re a small CRO, a medium med tech, or a pharma giant - we can help you.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network* (see below) is hosting a live webinar which will explode common myths around the UK’s ability to deliver commercial clinical research. This session will be hosted by Matt Cooper, Life-sciences Development Director. It will include performance data that will demonstrate why the UK should be your first choice for clinical research. You can find out:

- How much the UK’s market volume of commercial contract research (supported by the NIHR CRN) has changed
- What percentage of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is actively delivering commercial contract research studies (with support from the NIHR CRN)
- On average how many days it takes for NHS sites to get regulatory approval for research to take place (with NIHR CRN support)
- What percentage of commercial contract studies (supported by the NIHR CRN) are delivered to time and target
- How we are keeping clinical research in the public eye
- How the UK is sharpening its competitive edge by achieving more and more key first global patient milestones

With the advent of NGS and existing molecular approaches, why is IHC unique and relevant for companion diagnostics? January 22, 2015 to learn more from Dr. Mary Padilla, Pathologist, Senior Medical Director, Companion Diagnostics, Ventana Medical Systems Inc. If you provide companion diagnostic services, develop targeted therapies, or prescribe targeted therapies, then this is the webinar for you!

With challenges to highly priced rare disease medicines and the Cancer Drug Fund evolving again – what is next, what are the ramifications for high priced/innovative treatments delivering beneficial outcomes to defined patient populations in the UK and how can pharma navigate seemingly choppy waters of access for rare disease treatments and orphan drugs?

Working in partnership with IMS Health, pharmaphorum has assembled an expert panel including NHS England’s Malcolm Qualie, Alan Kane of Shire Pharmaceuticals, Angela McFarlane of IMS Health, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust's Nick Medhurst and pharmaphorum’s own Paul Tunnah to present and debate around these issues in a free to attend one hour webinar.

This event will cover:
• Access, in the UK, to higher priced drugs/innovative treatments
• Rare Disease/Orphan Drug access in the UK
• The evolution of the Cancer Drugs Fund - what does this look like, what could it mean for pharma/healthcare

It will also enable frank discussion around the new NHS England processes.

In this presentation we will re-visit an often overlooked parameter in the CBC, the MPV. This parameter has critical clinical applications, such as discriminating between thrombocytopenias caused by bone marrow disease (low platelet production) versus those caused by increased platelet destruction in the circulation.

- Are you working for a Contract Research Organisation (CRO)?
- Are you looking to place your research within the UK?
- Do you want to know how the CRN can help deliver your study?

In the past the UK’s reputation for delivering clinical research was questionable. But that’s all changed. Over the last six years the research landscape here has changed dramatically allowing us to make great strides in delivering commercial contract research.

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network is hosting a live webinar which will explain how we work together with CROs to meet the needs of the life-sciences industry. Not only will we explode common myths around the UK’s ability to deliver commercial contract research, we will also use performance data to demonstrate why the UK should be your first choice for clinical research delivery.

This session will be hosted by Dr Matt Cooper, Life-sciences Development Director, of the NIHR Clinical Research Network. It will include:

- An explanation of how CROs fit into the UK’s research delivery infrastructure
- A look at the UK’s market volume of commercial contract research
- The percentage of the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) that is actively delivering commercial contract research studies with our support
- Downward trends in time taken for NHS sites to get regulatory approval for research to take place
- The proportion of commercial contract studies that we are delivering to time and target
- How we are keeping clinical research in the public eye
- Information on data tools that are helping to UK to gain ground in research delivery
- How the UK is sharpening its competitive edge by achieving more and more key first global patient milestones

Non-adherence to self-management regimens in diabetes is globally a widespread, costly and ultimately life threatening issue.

Reasons for non-adherence are complex as the nature of the condition involves adherence to lifestyle, medication and diet changes, which individuals at times can find difficult to accept and adjust to. It is important to consider that the factors that influence each individual's ability to self manage are often very different and can equally affect patient outcomes, making this a globally recognised problem.

Working in collaboration with self-management and health psychology experts, Atlantis Healthcare, this pharmaphorum webinar will combine direct insights from leading patient advocates (and diabetes patients themselves) Kerri Sparling (type 1 diabetes patient and Editor of Six Until Me) and Simon O’Neill (type 2 diabetes patient and Director of Health Intelligence and Professional Liaison, Diabetes UK).

The webinar will also look at how healthcare stakeholders (pharma, payers and healthcare professionals) can support Type 1 and Type 2 to manage their condition, understand better the challenges these patients face and how we can help support improved outcomes for diabetes patients worldwide.

Our sixth and final webinar in this series will be an interactive evaluation and troubleshooting of customer assays. Please send us your questions and/or failed assays and we will go through troubleshooting together to identify the problem. We will need information on the target sequence, primers and probes, how the assay was designed and QC for the primers and probes, amplification plots and melting curves (if SYBR Green/Molecular Beacon or Scorpion assay).

A pharmaceutical industry multi-stakeholder interactive discussion on some of the unique challenges faced today in marketing pharma brands effectively to exploit areas of unrealised opportunity, plus what is required from both strategic marketing and research to deliver in view of this.

Our sixth and final webinar in this series will be an interactive evaluation and troubleshooting of customer assays. Please send us your questions and/or failed assays and we will go through troubleshooting together to identify the problem. We will need information on the target sequence, primers and probes, how the assay was designed and QC for the primers and probes, amplification plots and melting curves (if SYBR Green/Molecular Beacon or Scorpion assay).

Statistical data analysis is commonly applied to three different types of qPCR data: absolute quantification, relative quantification and expression profiling. Characterization of variability in the data is important both as an estimate of the data reliability as well as an estimate of the tolerance levels of scientific conclusions. Researchers go through a series of methods to minimize technical variability to arrive at scientific results with high precision, while at the same time maximizing the natural biological variability with the aim to characterize that as fully as possible. This presentation illustrates how reagent and sample quality as well as correct application of methods help researchers and technicians arrive at high quality scientific results and conclusions.

Statistical data analysis is commonly applied to three different types of qPCR data: absolute quantification, relative quantification and expression profiling. Characterization of variability in the data is important both as an estimate of the data reliability as well as an estimate of the tolerance levels of scientific conclusions. Researchers go through a series of methods to minimize technical variability to arrive at scientific results with high precision, while at the same time maximizing the natural biological variability with the aim to characterize that as fully as possible. This presentation illustrates how reagent and sample quality as well as correct application of methods help researchers and technicians arrive at high quality scientific results and conclusions.

Optimization and validation of the assay is absolutely essential even if the researcher is using a pre-designed, commercially available assay. There are number of factors, like primer and probe concentration or Tm gradient, which could be optimized in order to get a sensitive, efficient and reproducible assay.

Optimization and validation of the assay is absolutely essential even if the researcher is using a pre-designed, commercially available assay. There are number of factors, like primer and probe concentration or Tm gradient, which could be optimized in order to get a sensitive, efficient and reproducible assay.

Regardless of the colour of the next UK government that emerges as a result of the May election, the £30-£50bn NHS budget chasm is the abyss that all the parties fear in respect of its thereat to quality health service delivery and re-election.

With political backs to the abyss, no hostages will be taken. It is not unrealistic to expect a well co-ordinated and concerted offence by politicians and patient organisations alike on industry pricing of innovative speciality and rare diseases medicines:

With this scenario in mind pharmaphorum is once again working with IMS Health to bring you expert insight into what this means for the UK health system and more specifically market access for specialist treatments in the post-election environment.

Angela McFarlane, Senior principal IMS Health Local Market Access and Sheela Upadhyaya, NHS Senior Manager and member of the NICE highly specialised technologies program with over 17 years of experience in the delivery of services and in commissioning of highly specialised services for rare and ultra rare conditions, combine with pharmaphorum's Paul Tunnah to deliver an accurate analysis and frontline insight as to the already complex roadmap for access is about to change again.

This one hour event will include analysis of informed predictions which include:

The NICE HTA criteria will get tougher post end to end review (IMMTreV)
NICE and the NHS England will join forces to streamline access pre/post NICE
Risk at local level will be shifted to Providers under the new marginal tariff arrangements; which could indeed see a close to the CDF as the PbR excluded drugs list becomes a thing of a glorious past
Provider baselines will take the strain of innovation - the tough decisions will be softened by a drive to really accelerate uptake of NICE approved medicines

How can industry prepare for these changes in what is already a tough and complex environment?

Release 2.2 is one of the most significant improvements in NIST’s MS Search software. Prof Sparkman will lead an online webinar providing insight into the latest improvements in the most popular mass spectrometry program on the planet, with insights into how you can improve and speed up your analyses by using the full suite of functions available in MS Search 2.2g and the power of using these with the broadest compound coverage available.
-Compatibility and systems interface tips
-Retention time workflow
-LCMSn workflow
-Accurate mass workflow
-Search strategies
-Compound coverage strategies